GoKawiilSome of the most widely used private torrent trackers for pirating movies suspect that a banned user may have posed as a filmmaker protecting copyrights in a failed attempt to seek revenge.
TorrentFreak has been tracking this story closely, reporting last September that an alleged independent filmmaker named Matthew Schneider sued six private trackers for infringing copyrights on some films that he supposedly made. Trackers targeted include PassThePopcorn, BroadcasTheNet, and HDBits. For months, the filmmaker sought to get Cloudflare to unmask operators of the trackers through a copyright fight, which went on until trackers alerted the court last month that Schneider appeared to be an impostor.
In a sworn declaration, the actual filmmaker behind the movies cited in the complaint wrote that he had no association to the plaintiff in the case. “I am not involved in, nor have I ever appeared in, this case,” Schneider wrote.
To keep the copyright fight alive, the plaintiff swore, “I’m a different Matthew Schneider.” He then claimed to have coincidentally made three films with the same exact titles as the other filmmaker’s movies, Split: A Film Anthology, Do Us Part, and Orlando Gloom, Always the Same.
For the judge, Andrea R. Wood, this unusual turn in what could have been a major case was unexpected. TorrentFreak noted that this was the first copyright case to target “multiple prominent private torrent trackers,” and the judge warned that the plaintiff could face sanctions if the private trackers’ allegations were true and he filed a frivolous claim with intent to deceive the court.
As pressure mounted on the plaintiff to clarify his complaint, he abruptly decided to voluntarily dismiss the claims, TorrentFreak reported Tuesday. But that last-minute move might not save him from being sanctioned.